Agarose or acrylamide gel for DNA? - (Mar/23/2005 )

Hello there,
Any thought on why people use agarose and not acrylamide gels for DNA?

Thanks.

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Hi!
I recently passed course in Molecular biology & genetics I 've dome couple of labs for DNA isolation, so the answer is AGAROSE

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hi
agarose are easier to handle and to prepare. Moreover the separation is quick. A polyacrylamide gel is harder to run and not easy to reveal. And what about re-migrating in a PA gel?

An other point is the precision of separating. Polyacrylamide gels are enough precise to separe DNA base per Base. Agarose gels can't.

hope this can be a start of answering.
fred

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Agarose because its easier to prepare and the meshwork of an agarose get is more suitable for resolution of DNA,

Jon

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hello


i also think that agarose is fit enough for DNA ,,,its easier in preparing and handling than poly acrylamide and u can use it when u are having muliple samples of DNA to detect (fas in preparation and shor time and ahorter time to get he results

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In my experience:

AGAROSE/EtBr/other dye: usually used to detect high/mid molecular weight DNA/RNA, depending on concentration (of agarose), altough at 4% u could see small DNA (smaller than 30 pb)...50 ng/uL or less depending on the dye

ACRYLAMIDE: Ive used it when I worked as a technician in a forensic lab...amplifing STRs and using AgNO3 to visualize DNA. Id use it at 7% (with Urea) and some really long gels (3h run)...could spot 1 bp difference....was pretty neat. (They used this technique to do manual-sequencing when I was a little boy...lol....thank god for automatic sequencing...)

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Dear monolithis,

Both agarose and acrylamite can be use to seperate DNA. Generally, agarose gel is much more cheeper and esier to prepare compare to acrilamite gel. However, the resolution of agarose gel is no way to compare to acrylamite.
Which one should use is really depend on your purpose.

As I am doing rutine diagnosis work, allI need to know is positive or negative. Thus agarose gel surve the purpose.

I f you doing DNA profilling work like fringerprinting, SSCP which require high resolution, acrylamite gel is the choice.

Normally,gel % of agarose gel is 1.5-3%. Acrylamite gel is about 12%.

Regards
yongyk

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